Hard bricked... without a good reason!

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I've owned my SGII since release, went through a few roms, never had any issues. I have been running liquidsmooth for a month or two, without much issue. Although, lately stablity has dropped off a little. Nothing bad, just a freeze every few days and other minor hiccups.

Then something bad happened.... Last night I was using the phone and it turned off. Then it wouldn't boot. Battery pull, and rebooted but no joy. Then I booted to recovery (TWRP, but I'm not sure which version) and found that it said something along the lines of "E: could not mount /system", along with lots of other similar failure to mount messages. Oh well, I guess I'll just wipe it and flash something new. Any attempt to wipe would hang and then the phone would turn off after a few minutes.

Then I went to flash the stock setup from odin (using the howto from the dev section) , but it too would fail every time. I even tried different builds from samsung's official roms, but they all would fail to install on the phone. I read every thread I could find, and the next thing to try seemed to be an emergency recovery through Kies. That also failed, except it left my phone hard bricked. I can't get into download or anything, nothing shows in the device manager, just completely dead... I made a USB jig, but no luck there either.

I'm completely frustrated... I don't know what to do now... Buy a MB from ebay? The phone was flawless before all this. Any suggestions? I'm using a blackberry pearl for now, I can't let that happen.

Have you tried the Jig on another Samsung phone so you know the one you made physically works?

Some people have managed to get into DL Mode by pulling the battery, SIM, SD, etc. For 5 - 10 minutes then connecting it to the pc with Odin running b4 inserting the battery to enter DL Mode.

Otherwise mobiletechvideos has a really good reputation and turn around time for JTag service.

There is a chance its a hardware problem, and hopefully another member on here can shed some light on the possibility of it being a HW issue or not..

Cheers,

Chris

Thanks for the suggestions. I don't have another samsung phone to try the jig with, but I'll see if I can get a friend to let me hook up this crazy looking thing. I got the resistors set up to 299K, hoped that would be close enough, but perhaps not.

I tried that plug-first-battery-second trick to get into DL mode, but that's not working either.

I looked at the jtag service too, but my fear is that I have corrupted memory. In that case, I wouldn't get a refund if I still couldn't get to a fully healthy boot. It seems odd though... not like it's a common trend for this particular model (that I've seen).

Just seems so strange that it happened for no apparent reason... before it was hard bricked I was able to USB mount the internal storage and access and transfer almost all the contents, except for one folder. I wonder if that one part of the memory caused all the problems?

Again, thanks for the suggestions. I'll keep plugging away at anything that might help, and in the mean time I guess I'll keep my eyes out for broken phones or some way to salvage a board.

If im not mistaken, a hard brick should show up in you device manager as the board itself when connected.

Does anything show in you device manager when its connected? And have you tried using a different PC which has never had Kies installed on it, where you just install the drivers for the T989?

Odin tends to fail at the modem or due to the presence of a .PIT
I got myself out of a brick which started over the a very similar issue, but due to a bad flash.

After 5 hrs of getting nowhere (I was using a Jig) I would get Odin to recognize the phone (My Screen was NOT displaying the DL Mode screen, It was going into DL Mode but other than Odin recognizing it, there were no signs of life!) after enought tries but flashing to stock would fail. I ended up taking a shot at flashing the stock kernel using 512.Pit from a T959, Reflashing the same Kernel, then flashing recovery. I don't advise anyone do this as that PIT file is NOT for a T989, and it may have been BS luck not the use of that PIT file that did the trick.

But I did get it back running %100

Good tips, thanks! Were you using the jig to get the phone into the black screen download mode?

I hadn't tried another PC, although I did make sure any Kies processes were disabled. I just tried another computer, but still nothing gets recognized. Oddly enough, not even the basic "hard brick" USB driver shows up in the device manager.

Thanks for the additional ideas.

Re: Hard bricked... without a good reason!

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This happen to me before, I just cleared cache and Davik then rebooted recovery then flashed another Rom.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

Unfortunately for me, since data, cache, and system couldn't be mounted, I couldn't successfully clear them.

Originally Posted by KLR Rico

Good tips, thanks! Were you using the jig to get the phone into the black screen download mode?

I hadn't tried another PC, although I did make sure any Kies processes were disabled. I just tried another computer, but still nothing gets recognized. Oddly enough, not even the basic "hard brick" USB driver shows up in the device manager.

Thanks for the additional ideas.

I would put the jig in with the battery and everything still removed, and alot of trial and error trying things like battery first then connecting the cable with Odin always being already running. Then doing the reverse, etc.

When I did get Odin to recognize the phone, one thing I learnt is when it would detect, it only ever happened after having killed and reopened Odin. I have no explanation on why using "End Task" after each attempt to connect and opening Odin again made a difference but it did.

Have you had a look at the QPST thread? I would ask one of the members contributing to it about why you would or would not see the board. And you could always try installing the boards drivers manually, or enable "Show hidden devices" in your device manager.....

Did you contact the guys at mobiletechvideos and explain the details?

You were able to boot to recovery, so it sounds partition related. But I would try just to flash the stock UVLH1 kernel and recovery with Odin vs full stock rom if you do get it to detect. And if it does detect with Odin eventually do not let it reboot or loose power. Just Kill Odin, unplug the cable if you need to, Start Odin again and reconnect the cable. Once in DL Mode it will stay in DL Mode as long as you have the reboot option in Odin unchecked, etc.

Also if you can get the battery charged fully somehow, your best shot is with a fully charged battery.

Chris